Computers are often linked together through networks to allow the resources of a computer at one location to be used by a computer and end user at another location. In a distributed environment, computers known as servers perform various tasks for client computers that communicate with the server over a network. The server enables sharing of files and other resources between client computers and the server, such as electronic mail. As an example, a world wide web (“web”) server may provide resources to client computers over the Internet.
It is often necessary to manage activities of a computer or determine the relative health of a computer system by viewing screen display information and/or interacting with the computer through user input devices. This is especially true for servers whose resources are utilized by many individual client computers, such as within a corporate network or the Internet. For many conventional systems, the technician or other user who needs to view the screen displays and interact with the computer being managed is required to be physically located at the site of the computer. However, it is not always feasible for a technician or other user to be physically present.
For example, a system administrator of a corporate network is present at one location, but the computers of the corporate network may be spread around the globe. To effectively manage the computers of the corporate network, the system administrator must be able to effectively monitor many or all of the computers of the network contemporaneously. Because the system administrator cannot be physically present at each computer to be managed at the same time, effective management of the computers of the network becomes very difficult if not impossible. As a result, costly additional human resources are required to improve management of the computers.
Present solutions to providing remote management are a service under the operating system or a software application such as PC ANYWHERE from SYMANTEC CORPORATION. However, because these present solutions are software based, the operating system must be operational with all services loaded to allow the remote monitoring to occur. Therefore, configuration and boot-up screens such as those provided by a BIOS are not made available to the remote location. For this reason, utilization of a hardware-based device is desirable. Keyboard, video, mouse (“KVM”) devices exist that allow a single keyboard, monitor, and mouse to control multiple computers. However, even with a KVM device connected to a LAN to control a set of computers, the device can only address one computer at a time. It is desirable for the system administrator to be able to remotely manage a set of local computers and to be able to run test scripts on some or all of the computers from a single remote location.
It is also desirable to be able to emulate a drive of a remote computer at a set of local computers in order to facilitate running test scripts simultaneously on the set of local computers. KVM devices known in the art lack this ability to emulate a remote computer's drive at the local computers. An additional problem arises when trying to capture a digital video signal from a digital video interface (“DVI”) at the local computer and provide the signal to a local display while at the same time capturing screen frames from the signal to provide to a remote computer over a network. Since DVI uses a point-to-point configuration, the digital video signal cannot simply be split by traditional means. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.